At 2PM on 11th of January my friends and I marched around the school, singing and dancing to popular mostly UK rap tunes. We felt alive, enganged, with eachother, we were a force so to speak. Sofiane, one of my friends, came up to me after the action and said he felt like he was truly himself. To me, I was commenting on claiming space for ourselves to be ourselves. It was about making your own rules, despite how violent and intruding it might seem to the spectator. We are often the ones not claiming space, the apologiser, the ‘okay I’ll go back to where I come from’, the ‘okay, I’ll turn the music down’. For half an hour, we wouldn’t.
Backstory
Last Thursday I was part of an exhibition at school called _space. I had proposed a new work to my colleages during XMAS, which would be a protest karaoke session... BTW - I have stopped speaking about my plans completely with my tutors, I have gone fully autonomous. I realised that I'd be happy to talk to someone when I have done a few works. I think I create minimum of 2 works per month, so a crit every month or so is quite nice. It would inspire the next few works.
Anyway, the karoake session... For a week I was debating what I should do, what format it should have. I knew it was about how music can transform you how you feel, and that it can make you feel comfortable. But I didn't want to intellectualise my intention and try and illustrate what I wanted to express. I thought of having different individuals walk around the school and sing music to themselves (protest songs) while they were listening to it in their headphones (verbatim), but I had a shitty feeling about it. That it would be pretentious. Thankgod I listened to my gut. 1,5 days before, I changed the whole thing: It was going to be a party.
In the meantime I had convinced 4 people to do the initial karoake session with me. On the day itself, I found a few other people (some of them were in our exhibition) and just told them: the whole idea is that we are going to chill and have fun. That we were going to feel comfortable. At 1.30 pm, I had somehow gathered 10 people. With a laptop I had borrowed from the library and a bose speaker I got for christmas, I slowly started playing songs. We were all vibing to UK rap tunes - J-Hus, Stormzy, Krept and Konan, Lotto Boyz.
At 2pm, I grabbed the speaker, played the first thing that popped up, which was funnily enough Kevin Little and marched outside to the hallway. Within seconds, we were dancing, singing, parading. The next songs that were going to play were determined by my participants, whiom eloquently thought "we need a big tune!!!" Timothy, one of the boys in my class, took the role of the dancer, the hypeman, encouraging others to dance. Some of the girls were responsible for the tunes (we need Big shaq!!!). I was in charge of leading the course of the parade, even though toward the end we were led into the elevator by someone I dont know whoo (which wouldnt go up because we were all jumping too much out of exitement) it was all very funny.
It was very fast that people had found their role within this music mob and that I had no control over it anymore. It was wonderful. Our two tutors were walking behind us, Nyousha said that one of my tutors 'looked like a proud dad'.
We ended in the exhibition again, laughing, smiling, hugging each other. In the crit, my tutors spoke about how they experienced it. That interestingly enough, some people must have thought it was quite intimidating, but if they had a closer look it was just people of color having fun, which made it political. My other tutor said that it was as if I had really listened to the criticism he gave before xmas during a crit (that my work is too nice and I should do something that might piss people off), and I said I did! That I thought about it all christmas of what he said. I am very proud that I had listened to him, because usually it takes about half a year before I can transform criticism into the next work. They thought I had been able to insert that concept in it but still remain true to myself.
I am also proud that I have listened to myself that I should take care about documentation more. Thanks to Thai the photos look so stunning!!! I can't remember what else they said. I think it was all very positive!! I was very proud of myself.
I felt like this was an ode to my friends at school. Even though many of them I have met just in the last month, I find them all very interesting people and it is surprising how much we are all connected to music. We all knew the lyrics to the songs and vibed off it, like our lives were dependant on it. Like Sofiane said: he could finally be himself.
